Brother Can You Spare $1.25 Million? - Appointments and Influence For Sale By The DNC

Among the some 30,000 emails dumped by Wikileaks just prior to the Democratic Convention was the following exchange among Jacquelin Lopez, the District Director for California State Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia (56th District), Alan Reed,  Democratic National Committee (DNC) Director of Compliance, Scott Comer, DNC Finance Chief of Staff, and Brad Marshall, DNC Chief Financial Officer:

Say what? Pay to play? Donations from donors? While these dots couldn't be sufficiently connected to establish any wrongdoing by the DNC, the smell was certainly there.

Some of the DNC's upper management involved in peddling
influence and appointments for donations, from L to R:
Alan Reed, Scott Comer, Jordan Kaplan, and Nick Seminerio

But it raised a very big red flag, at least enough of one to cause news organizations to sift through thousands of emails for anything that would establish a direct connection between donations to the DNC and appointments. Sure enough, several email strings turned up documenting the DNC's attempt to sell appointments and influence in exchange for donations.

Alfreda Robinson-Bennett

On April 10, 2016,  then-DNC National Finance Chairman Jordan Kaplan (and now-Finance Director for Obama for America, a SuperPac based in Chicago) sent an email to his minions letting them know that it was, "...last call for boards and commissions..." He directed them to send names to Scott Comer, the DNC's Finance Chief of Staff. "Send as many as you want. Just don't know how many people will get to", he said.

.

Nathaniel Lee

Comer elaborated in a follow up email. "Any folks who you'd like to be considered to be on the board of (for example) USPS, NEA, NEH. Basically, anyone who has a niche interest and might like to serve on the board of one of these orgs."

Comer eventually received names from his peeps and on April 26 he forwarded them to his assistant, Nick Seminerio.

Eventually, more email strings were found exposing what was heretofore suspected but was now right there in black and white - the DNC was trying to reward donors with positions on governmental boards and commissions.

Anita Jackson

On April 26, emails were exchanged among the various DNC staffers. Comer pieced together a list of names that he emailed to Kaplan. The list included 23 donors whose names were to be sent to the White House for appointments. Among the names were folks like Anita Jackson, Alfreda-Robinson-Bennett, Nathaniel Lee, and Diane Robertson.

In a one-line email with no subject line, Kaplan transmitted the list to Amanda Moose, President Obama's "Special Assistant for Presidential Personnel". "For your review” he merely said, obviously having reached a prior understanding with her after discussions.

Calls between the White House and the DNC staffers continued and finally in early May, Moose let it be known that she wanted to have a 20-minute conversation with Kaplan about the prospective appointments. Kaplan made no bones about the DNC's desire to have the donors appointed to positions on Commissions or Boards as a reward for the donors' "loyalty".

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After the emails surfaced, the news organizations that discovered the emails attempted to contact the DNC and the White House for comment. Amanda Moose said she was not authorized to comment.

Kaplan hung up after realizing he was speaking to a reporter. Comer directed requests for comment to a political consultant who sent the request to the DNC. The DNC never responded.

But we're just scratching the surface when it comes to the DNC peddling influence. Leaked emails, documents, and voice mails dated prior to this year's Democratic Convention reveal that anyone with a big pocketbook could buy access to the top echelon in the Democratic Party.

$90,000 bought you two tickets to a roundtable campaign briefing with "high level" Democrats. $150,000 got you two extra tickets to the same soiree. Native American tribes were eligible for five tickets, but the price of poker was $200,000. $30,000 only got you access to business and industry panels.

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A secret pamphlet mailed to donors and corporate PACs  listed the convention "packages" available. Cisco, FedEx, Honeywell, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, UBS, New York Life, Raytheon, Southern Company, Quicken Loans, Suntrust, Capital One, Metlife, State Farm, and 21st Century Fox were told that in order to score score the highest level of access through the "Rittenhouse Package" they would have to to pony up the maximum allowable amounts for three separate accounts in each of the last two years - $100,200 to the DNC’s convention account, $100,200 to its headquarters fund, and $33,400 to the party’s general account. This package included six tickets to meetings with Democratic policymakers.

Individual donors could also buy the Rittenhouse Package by either bundling $1.25 Million from other donors or donate $467,600 themselves they would qualify for the Rittenhouse Package.

One donor went whole hog with the Rittenhouse Package. At least fourteen donors bought the DNC's Society Hill package, one step below. Forty-six bought the Fairmount package, and 108 opted for the Main Line package.

At the last minute, after some donors complained that there were no plums to be picked by donors who had maxed out in donations once, the DNC added the Chestnut Hill package to the mix, requiring a $33,400 contribution to the DNC’s general fund. The Chestnut Hill package offered fewer perks, i.e. limited access to Democratic policymakers or industry events, but in emails to donors DNC fundraisers told them that convention contributions would be well received.


An email from a DNC fundraiser to his lieutenants pushed them to sell the new package, but cautiously. “The purpose of this package is to bring in new max out checks that we would not otherwise get."

Other emails show that there isn't anything that isn't for sale by the DNC. Interested in sitting next to Obama at a White House state dinner? That can be arranged if you're willing to ante up. Just don't get out-donated by somebody else or else you'll get bumped.

That happened to a donor from Maryland who was diagnosed with cancer. He made his donation so he could sit next to President Obama but was then replaced at the table by a more generous donor. When a DNC staffer questioned the situation and reminded Jordan Kaplan that the bumped donor was diagnosed with cancer, Kaplan responded, “A lot of people unfortunately get sick.”

Now there's a guy with a heart.

Looking to play a round of golf with President Obama. That can easily be arranged at the right price and there are a lot of folks willing to pay to play, in more ways than one. The email dump includes a laundry list of donors who have made sizable donations to play golf with the President.

Last but not least, there's dinner with Hillary. $200,000 buys you dinner with her but there's no mention of who pays the tab after dinner.

All of the above flies in the face of the Democrats screaming about money and its influence in politics. This mantra has now been proven to be nothing but hypocritical hyperbole. Like the sleight of hand magician, Democrats wave a hand in the air to distract the audience's attention while doing something completely different with the other hand.

What really struck me, though, was the lack of any human compassion when passing out the plums to donors, as in the case of the cancer stricken donor. These actions reflect the mentality in the top echelon of the DNC. In any other organization, such an abject lack of human compassion by a representative of a company would have resulted in termination. But even after the emails surfaced, Jordan Kaplan remains in a very lucrative position in an Obama SuperPac. All you can do is shake your head.